Main navigation

Bridge work

The Bath Newseum story about the weed-infested stone balustrade beside Pulteney Bridge prompted an email from a follower in the United States called Victoria Gall.

She writes: I’m from Boston, MA and fell in love with Bath in 1974 and it changed my career and my interests. I worked at ‘The Min’ in 1978 and became a close friend with an architect (and his family) who worked on the restoration of the Pulteney Bridge in the 1970’s.

Original piece of Pulteney Bridge stone.

On return to the US, he gave me a piece of the original bridge, the ‘RID’ which had to be re-carved in the restoration process. I cherish the stone, the architectural drawing of the ‘before restoration’ and ‘ after restoration.’

Architectural drawings of the bridge – before and after restoration.

I’ve returned to Bath more than 20 times, ( annually since 2012) where I spend days wandering the city which my family and friends know is my favourite place in the world.

A photograph of the ‘restored’ replacement stones – taken in 2015.

Thanks for your Blog which I read with keen interest.

Victoria has been kind enough to send a photo of the piece of stone she has and the place on the bridge from where it came.

She also sent me a follow up after a conversation she had with Alison Stubbs – the wife of her architect friend Paul who worked on the restoration and died in the mid-1980’s.

Alison told her:

“I can’t remember much about the Pulteney Bridge job but I think Paul was working for John Vivian at the time. This was before he became part of Stubbs, Mutter and Coulthard.

The bridge work was financed by the Georgian Group and that explains the GG on the weather vane.

The G G weathervane on Pulteney Bridge.

I was working at the time but I do remember being invited to a civic reception to honour the completion. Lunch in the Guildhall with Dame Jennifer Jenkins who was the chair of the Georgian Group.” (Dame Jennifer died last year – aged 96)